Bernard

[Paul Arden]

What a great story, Chris!!

https://www.sexyloops.com/index.php/ps/ ... d-morrisey

Haha and I found it hilarious when you proposed the chairman

Cheers, Paul

[whinging pom]

thankyou, glad you liked, and thanks again for the opportunity.

Anybody that knows the uk , especially england knows how much snobbery and class is engrained in the society. You can deny being influenced on a personal level but you can't deny its influence around you. You just have to work with it if you can.....or your biting off your nose to spite your face.

I think outcomes are results and results are just outcomes, ( whether thats club politics or casting practice) You have to look at either how you can learn from it, or, how you can turn it to your advantage. That's all i was doing.

The chairman's roll in club is pretty benign, or it should be, he's not a chief exec. He 'chairs' meetings and is the public voice and signature of the club.
Being a fully educated and qualified Architect of Historical listed builders, our chap had a whole squadron of letters after his name.
So on correspondence to riparian owners , including the odd lord and lady, and to organisations and 'official bodies' it carries some credibility and gravitas.
He enjoyed the whole social roll that comes with his post. He was painfully dogmatic and quite bellicose, which is a pain when he's against you, but an advantage if he's on side. You just have to avoid dealing with him when he has had a few sherberts of a night.

(My value in such a roll would be worthless, im a working class gardener, expelled from school, and with a northern accent. I'm more value ( I think) as a bit of a ringleader and a loose cannon, it suits me anyway.)

My only really active battle for habitat and change was with the secretary, who admitted he struggled with the chairman , and the complacent members who followed the secretary's word.
So I had to work with them, it was their club too and we all wanted improvement.

All that left was a few members who just wanted to have easy fishing off tame banks for stocked Trout. ( but as i got to know the club more found they were a tiny pain in the arse minority) There was waiting list of eager potential members to fill the boots of anyone who didn't like where we were heading. So i wasted no energy on them, just worked on isolating them and ignoring their views , knowing a few would be silly enough to drop out in protest... and they did.

Given the choice most, including the chairman would prefer catching even smaller fish as long as they were wild and throughout the season.
So the best thing to do was get the growler on side....and make a public display of it. And hopefully that yapping, if it occured, would be at other people and be backing me up.

Eventually the Chairman crossed swords with one of the riparian owners whose garden had a bridge over the brook who unfortunatly ran a big law firm and cut off our access to this bridge in retaliation. His time in the roll now was looking counter productive to the interests of the club.

Once we got the next chap lined up this time with 'Dr ' in front of his name and OBE behind it and a love of catching wild trout from wild places. The Old chairman was retired off and the new titled and lettered signatory settled in to say welcome to the meeting.. and very little else.

Reading this back and the posts i sound almost Machiavellian , it doesn't reflect well, but its an honest account... We have a stream full of wild fish now and a fabulous environment for the public and fishermen and for the wild life. The ends, i think in the case, justify the means.
all best
pom

[Paul Arden]

You’re far more diplomatic than I am!! How long is the club’s section of river?

[whinging pom]

We have about three miles. 3/4 of it are fishable for trout
The rest is just too over grown to be worthwhile and I don’t have the volunteers available to do the works needed to keep on top of it if we did open it up.
Many of the older guys that volunteered and did much of the works are in there 70’s now, and we dont get many younger recruits that are of any use( bankers).
There’s areas downstream of us too, about another mile that we could probably wear the landowner down into giving us access, but again I don’t have the manpower to payback with looking after the storm damage and deal with the siltation.
One stretch would be the jewel in the crown, the ranunculus beds are like a chalk stream and there’s some deep pools with some quite chunky trout down there. I occasionally find myself down there doing some un official research with a fishing rod . I think that’s where many of our breeding fish move upstream from. Despite its diminutive length Its a rare evening you find anyone else fishing on the same beat, its very underused.
Which suits me fine !